Good Dog
by inbox
Summary: It's always hard to say goodbye to an old friend.


No one really plans for how they're going to die. No one devotes much time to thinking about how their friends might die, either. The mind skitters away from the subject no matter how hard you try, as if to protect your from remembering that you, too, are fallible. It keeps us going. It keeps us foolhardy.

Least that's what Arcade told him. Six didn't quite believe him. Rather wished that the doc would just go away a while and give him a moment of silence, because he felt a bit twisted up on the inside. Shit, man. This wasn't how he expected his afternoon to go.

"It was his time," Arcade said, and finally Six gave him a push. From where he was kneeling all he could reach was Arcade's knees, but it was enough to make him stumble a little and shut his craw.

"Julie was right," Six said, squinting up at him. "You got the bedside manner of a cactus."

"I'm trying, ok?" The doc sat on a rock and stretched out his legs, boot heels scuffing twin tracks through the dirt. "This isn't really my thing. I'm not trained in the art of giving eulogies over dead dogs."

"Don't be squallin' with me right now."

The courier sat back on his heels and looked at Rex. Not much of a way to go, poor ol' mutt. They'd run into a couple of cazadores up in the foothills and made short work o' the pests, the dog snapping at their wings and barking loud enough to be heard all the way back in Goodsprings. Twenty minutes later Rex whined long and loud and lay down in the middle of the road, and that'd been it. Arcade found the stinger buried right in his flank, just an inch shy from where the dog's metallic body began. A lucky sting. Damn dog hadn't even yelped.

"You want to bury him?"

Six shaded his eyes and looked at the sun, hazy and yellow and a thumbnail above the horizon. "Nah," he said after a moment. "No time. Don't want to get stuck down here in the valley when the dark comes callin'."

Arcade raised an eyebrow. "You sure?"

"No, I ain't sure. Mary wept, Gannon. Ease up a second." Rex's ears were velvety soft, and he rubbed them between thumb and forefinger. Always liked that, Rex did. Sit still of any amount of time and he'd come and put his head on Six's knee and give him a look until he scratched his ears or gave him a drink from his beer or both. Better to give him one last rub 'round the ears instead of looking at the dried frothy blood painted 'round his snout.

Poor dog. Damn dog.

"C'mon." Arcade offered Six a hand up. He brushed the dirt from his knees and they looked at the little pile of metal and dog crumpled on the road. "Why don't I drag him beside the rock," said Arcade eventually, and chanced patting Six on the shoulder. "No way someone can accidentally run over him."

"No bother," said Six. "Geckos will pick him clean by sundown tomorrow."

Arcade did it anyway, and for good measure scratched away a little more of the faded red bull painted on Rex's side. By the time he finished Six had his pack across his shoulders and was staring across the valley, complaining half-heartedly about finding some decent shelter by nightfall.

"Not going to say a final word?" Arcade pushed his glasses back up his nose and gave Six an enquiring look. "I know you two were inseparable."

Six shrugged. "It's a dog."

"Really? _Really?_ 'It's a dog'?" Arcade shook his head. "You've got a strange was of showing grief, you know that? I'm not saying you need to cast yourself into that valley of radscorpions in a fit of hysterical mourning, but this is taking the stoic act a little too far."

"Look at you all actin' like a sentimental fool." Six jammed his rattan hat down low over his eyes and pointed north. "There's an old camp up here. We can settle in 'fore it gets dark."

They walked in silence until Rex's last resting spot disappeared from sight, and walked on a little more.

"Reckon I'll get a bottle of something nice," said Six eventually. "Sit down with the King. Raise a glass or two to a good dog." He nodded to himself. "Reckon that'll do."

"And shed a tear?"

"Quit your sass. Bedside manner of a cactus and the social skills of a-"

"-of a cactus." Arcade glanced sideways. "Rex was a good dog."

"Yeah," said Six quietly. "He was."


End file.
